@avnibeautifulchaos: My 13 yo is on her school trip to DC for the week and for the first time ever is away from home for more than 2 nights. We’ve never done the AirTag thing on the kids backpacks because I figured it wouldn’t be great for my anxiety (having the option to track their whereabouts makes my brain obsessed with checking nonstop). But for this trip, given the distance and the duration, and the fact that the school wouldn’t be giving any real time updates during the week, I popped an AirTag into her backpack. Sure enough, I don’t love it. I find myself checking the app and feeling more anxious when it doesn’t update or they’re not where I thought they’d be. This is a case where intention and design matters a lot. The tech is just a tool - great for tracking luggage but terrible for tracking and trusting my kid. It’s just giving me the illusion of control and I can’t help but think my ideal would be somewhere in the middle - no AirTag on my kid but maybe an update in the morning and evening from the teachers and a picture of the group. Not every family sends their kids to sleep away camp so I don’t want to feel high maintenance or clingy for wanting updates. I don’t want to add burden to teachers with other priorities. And I don’t want to abdicate the solution to a tech tool that makes it easy to buy an answer that on the surface seems right but is all wrong, at least for me. And here lies one of the greatest challenges in solving these very human problems. Solving them well often means leaving part of it to be solved in human ways. Which is to say messy, unknowable, unpredictable. #mentalload #parentload #parentsoftiktok
